Ranchi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday arrived here on the eve of Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary and undertook a 10-km roadshow till the Raj Bhawan. November 15 also happens to be the day of Jharkhand coming into existence.
Modi is the first Prime Minister to be visiting Birsa’s birthplace Ulihatu and it comes amid the ongoing Assembly polls in several States with considerable tribal population. The 230-member-strong Madhya Pradesh Assembly has the highest number of seats (47) reserved for the Scheduled Tribe while Rajasthan has 25 seats of the total 200 Assembly seats reserved for STs. If 29 Assembly seats are reserved for the STs in Chhattisgarh, then Telangana has 12 ST seats.
Governor C P Radhakrishnan and Chief Minister Hemant Soren welcomed the PM at the airport while BJP workers and commoners lined up along the route till the Raj Bhawan to welcome him.
After his overnight stay, on Wednesday morning, the PM will visit Bhagwan Birsa Munda Memorial Park-cum-Freedom Fighter Museum in Ranchi, and then take a chopper to Birsa Munda’s birthplace Ulihatu village in Khunti district, where Modi will pay floral tributes to the freedom fighter and meet Birsa’s descendants.
He will launch a Rs 24,000-crore project aimed at the development of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) on Birsa birth anniversary, celebrated nationally as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Divas’ since 2021.
Under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PM PVTG) Mission’, basic facilities such as road and telecom connectivity, electricity, safe housing, clean drinking water and sanitation, improved access to education, health and nutrition and sustainable livelihood opportunities will be provided to PVTG habitations, which are mostly remote, scattered and inaccessible.
There are around 28 lakh PVTGs belonging to 75 tribes living in 22,544 villages in 220 districts in 18 states and Union territories.
The Prime Minister will also launch the ‘Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra’, release the 15th instalment of Rs 18,000 crore under the PM-KISAN scheme, and inaugurate and lay the foundation of projects worth Rs 7,200 crore in the state.
The focus of the Sankalp Yatra will be on reaching out to people and creating awareness and providing benefits of welfare schemes such as sanitation facilities, essential financial services, electricity connections, access to LPG cylinders, housing for the poor, food security, proper nutrition, reliable healthcare and clean drinking water.
Enrolment of potential beneficiaries will be done through details ascertained during the yatra, an official statement said adding the Prime Minister will flag off IEC (Information, Education and Communication) vans in Khunti, marking the launch of the ‘Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra’.
The Prime Minister will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone of projects worth around Rs 7,200 crore in sectors such as rail, road, education, coal, petroleum and natural gas. The projects that will be inaugurated include the new campus of IIM Ranchi, new hostel of IIT-ISM Dhanbad, Petroleum Oil and Lubricants (POL) depot in Bokaro, doubling of railway tracks in the Hatia-Pakra, Talgaria-Bokaro and Jarangdih-Patratu sections.
The projects of which foundation will be laid include the four-laning of 52-km stretch of Mahagama-Hansdiha section of NH-133, four-laning of 45-km stretch of Basukinath-Deoghar section of NH-114 A, KDH-Purnadih Coal Handling Plant and a new academic and administrative building of IIIT Ranchi.
